


Interrupt Us

by BryroseA



Category: Veronica Mars (Movie 2014), Veronica Mars (TV), Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Missing Scene, definitely on the E side of the M rating smut-wise, post TTDTL pre-MKAT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-27 06:02:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7606480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BryroseA/pseuds/BryroseA
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Logan Echolls is home from deployment. Time to cue the sweeping movie montage, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interrupt Us

**Author's Note:**

> In The Thousand Dollar Tan Line, Veronica has this to say about Logan: _“And she’d also found Logan again. Now he was her… what? New-old boyfriend? Lover? Skype buddy? Pen pal with benefits?”_
> 
> By the end of Mr. Kiss and Tell, she thinks this: _“I’m with Logan and I love him more than I thought I could love a man…”_
> 
> This fic is an attempt to explore some of the un-examined space between those two statements.

_“Did you ever know that you’re my heeeeero?”_ the car’s radio warbles softly. Veronica jabs at a few buttons, switching stations until she lands on something a little less headache-inducing—less like the soundtrack to a movie she’s somehow found herself reluctantly starring in. Movement in the sky above her grabs her attention.

_Here they come, Veronica._

Shading her eyes with one hand, she tilts her head back against the white leather of the convertible’s headrest to watch as the fighter jets swoop in low. The roar of their engines overhead escalates, vibrating in visible waves that haze and distort the air and drown out the music, anyway.

The grey bellies of the jets pass directly over her and then peel off one by one over the large hangar building she’s parked in front of, presumably heading for the landing strips on the other side. _The flight line_ , she corrects herself mentally.

This is the second group of six jets she’s seen execute the landing maneuver and, when she turns her head and squints, she can see the rapidly growing dots of a third group approaching the sky over the naval base. _Is that all of them?_ Veronica shifts in the car seat, drawing one foot up onto the seat and tucking it under her other leg where it immediately suctions uncomfortably to the leather.

It’s over ninety degrees; a hot day for San Diego, even in July. She’d probably be more comfortable putting the convertible top up and cranking the AC, but she’d wanted to see Logan fly in, even if she didn’t know which jet was his. Plus, she doesn’t want to be fucking around with car stuff when he finally shows up.

_You know, whenever that might be._

She’s been sitting here in the naval base parking lot for over forty minutes—the traffic downtown was a lot better than she’d anticipated. There’d been a steady trickle of people parking alongside her and then heading into the building for the first fifteen or so minutes she was there, but the last person she’d seen go into the hangar was a harried young mother with a baby strapped into a sling on her chest about twenty minutes ago.

The first of the jets had landed maybe ten minutes after that. Inside the hangar, reunions might be happening already. Or does the squadron wait for everyone to land before they deplane?

Veronica snags her phone, types “ _How many men in Navy sq“_ into the Google search bar, before throwing the phone back into the bag on the seat next to her. She winces as the movement pries her momentarily off of the car seat, leaving part of the skin from her thighs behind. Should have worn pants.

Getting dressed this morning for the grand homecoming, her hands had hovered over the only short dress in her wardrobe, but it was tight and black and it just felt too... Too.

Instead, she'd dug deep into her drawers, settling on a pair of turquoise shorts—lightweight cotton, cool and breezy—and a heather gray stretchy tank top with some cutwork detailing around the neck and hem. With her hair long and loose and strappy gladiator sandals, Veronica feels _almost_ equal to the situation. It’s not a dress, but, well…she knows she looks cute. _Sue me._

A commercial comes on and she clicks the radio preset buttons on the steering wheel. Matchbox Twenty. Drake. Old school Jay Z.

Logan had been strict in his request that she wait for him in the car “for a quick getaway,” but it feels weirder and weirder with each passing minute. The curious side-looks from others as they went into the building suggest that waiting in the car isn’t the social norm in this situation. _But since when do you care about the accepted social norm, Veronica?_

One more click: Celine Dion, still warbling.

_Ugh._

_Fuck it. I’m going in._

Before she can get out of the car, though, a familiar, lean figure appears in the large open door of the hangar. He’s momentarily silhouetted by the blazing sun as he scans the small parking lot and spots the car. As he lopes toward the convertible, the details of his face and figure resolve.

Logan.

Logan a little damp and sweaty in a sage green flight suit, brown lace-up boots, and aviator shades. And he’s moving quickly in her direction.

Veronica fumbles at the door handle, her body suddenly both weirdly light and unwieldy at the same time. but doesn’t get anywhere. Before she can take command of the situation and get out of the car, he’s there, coming to a stop by the driver’s side and grinning down at her.

A strange three-fold instinct takes over her body: Run away. Grab him and tear that uniform off of his body. Punch him awkwardly in the arm and make a cheesy joke.

He pushes the shades up onto the top of his head. “Hey, Veronica.”

“Hey.”

He leans forward and for a moment she thinks he’s going to reach into the car and scoop her up, but instead, his hands come to rest on the edge of the car door. Her fumblings with the handle finally connect and the door pops open, smacking into Logan waist-high. As he doubles over and she reaches for him in apology, her elbow jabs the radio volume button on the steering wheel and the music swells out loud—louder—painfully loud: _“CAUSE I CAN FLY HIIIGHER THAN AN EEEEEEAGLE—”_

She punches it off with one finger and struggles to a standing position, the car door still trapped between them.

“Fuck,” Logan swears under his breath, recovering from the blow, wincing. He moves back as she pushes forward, practically falling into his arms.

As soon as she clears the door, he pulls her in hard for a tight embrace, her feet dangling off the ground. The corner of his seabag is poking into her side, and her hand gets caught in the strap, and he’s close—there, right there—for a brief moment of pressure and then he sets her down, steady on the ground. Rubs his palms up and down her arms once, briskly, then stepping back.

She works her wrist free of the strap and says, “You’re here,” breathlessly, and what is with that, really? Of course he’s here. Of course he is. 

“Yeah. You okay?” Logan bends down a little to look her straight in the face. Veronica can’t seem to figure out how to touch him again. Can’t quite find the muscle memory. How does this work? The nine years apart feel like they’re overwhelming the two weeks of togetherness. It seems weirdly…forbidden to reach out and take his hand. Or kiss him.

She smiles instead. “Great.”

“You look... _amazing_. God.” He lifts a hand a little hesitantly, hovering near her face, and she sways toward him. Maybe if _he_ touches her it will be—

There’s a sudden loud burst of noise from the direction of the hangar and Logan curls his fingers into his palm and drops the hand, looking away. When Veronica follows his gaze she can see one or two other pilots—and their large family entourages—starting to make their way out of the building and into the parking lot.

“Let’s get out of here.” Logan neatly steps around her and slides into the driver’s side of her car. _His car._

His hip brushes her as he passes by and she steps back with almost…alarm? _What the fuck?_

“Well we’ve got a nice sunny San Diego day on order for you, Lieutenant,” Veronica tosses out brightly as she makes her way around to the passenger side.

Logan, meanwhile, grimaces at how far up the seat is pulled under the steering wheel, and swings his legs out of the open door.

“Seriously, it’s been hot as hell all week…but hell ain’t got the Padres.” _What am I even…?_

Logan chuckles a little, his eyes on the floor mats, but still doesn’t respond. Instead he presses and holds one of the buttons on the inside of the car door that Veronica had never bothered to figure out. It’s apparently a preset, because the seat slides backwards with a quiet mechanical whirr, the lumbar adjusting back and seat base tilting down to accommodate his tall frame.

“Feels like Hell, looks like Heaven. Good ol’ SoCal in July,” she says into the silence, continuing to channel her long-dead Grandpa Mars, for some reason.

“It’s got nothing on the Gulf, trust me,” says Logan, finally. “Actually, the surface of the _Sun_ has nothing on the Gulf, so...”

As Veronica settles herself in the passenger side, briskly snapping the tab of her seat belt into the buckle and trying to pull herself together for godsakes— _you’re a grown woman. Act like it.—_ Logan swings his legs back into the convertible and closes his door. He pats the armrest on the car door affectionately, apparently appreciative of the things in his life that slide right back into place as though he’d never left.

Veronica’s stomach gives an uneasy flop.

After adjusting the mirrors, Logan takes the car out of the lot and off the base with a tightly controlled aggression that suggests he missed driving. He’s…quiet. Different.

_I’ve never seen him in his flight suit before._

His hair is painfully short—almost ugly in a weirdly appealing way where she can see all of the angles of his skull—he’s tanner than she’s ever seen him, and more muscular than when he left, which she didn’t think was possible. And…tired? Yeah, he looks a little worn. Veronica realizes she’s staring avidly at his profile and looks away.

Logan merges the Beemer onto the freeway, speeding up to pass a dusty red minivan with a stick figure family on its back window. “Thanks for coming to get me.”

Veronica flips the sun visor down for no reason she can determine and then quickly back up again. “I would’ve come in.”

He nods and directs that tiny little smile of his that never fails to thrill at the road ahead of him, but doesn’t say anything. They’re maybe five miles more down the road, passing an exit sign, when he murmurs. “There’s always cameras there, you know, and I’d hate…”

_Oh._

Her gaze skitters away, landing on the indiscriminate brown blur of the passing hills lining the freeway—grasses and sage and chaparral all aggressively dried out, scorched by the heat wave and the drought into perfect kindling. There’s a comment about it hovering on the tip of her tongue, but she can’t fucking go to the _weather_ again. Jesus. _Get it together, Veronica._ For some reason, she can’t shake this weird ‘this is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful wife’ daze she feels. It’s only Logan. They’re dating. They’ve Skyped. He loves her and emotional awkwardness is not her brand.

“SO,” she says in her best water cooler voice. “How was deployment?”

He huffs a laugh. “Oh, you know, same ol’, same ol’. Fly a jet in circles over water. Fly a jet in circles over land. And _never_ any mini-muffins at the budget meetings.”

“What _is_ the armed services coming to?”

That’s good for a laugh and a few non-awkward moments. Logan speeds up, smoothly sliding into the fast lane and Veronica gathers her hair into a loose ponytail with her hands, trying to tame it. “Seriously, though,” she says, “you’re—it was…okay?”

“Yeah, it was a good deployment. Everyone home safe. Not a lot of ordnance expended.”

“That’s good.” She turns that over in her mind a bit. Considers asking exactly what ordnance includes. Contemplates reaching up to scratch her nails across the back of his neck. Doesn’t do either.

_Dammit._

In a suddenly familiar gesture, Logan catches his bottom lip between his teeth briefly. “Hey, Veronica, I’m sorry if I’m a little...off,” he says, just barely loudly enough to be heard over the wind. “I’ve never, really, you know, had someone come meet me, but Dick always says I’m ‘weird as fuck’ when I first get back. Being home sometimes feels...I don’t really know how to explain it, I just...” He takes his eyes off the road for a brief second to brush the back of his fingers across her cheek. It’s the most glancing of touches, but it starts a tight, hot feeling behind her eyes even before he continues: “I missed you.”

She swallows hard. “Me too. I—”

An SUV swerves suddenly in front of them, horn blaring as it cuts across four lanes of traffic towards an exit. Logan puts both of his hands back on the wheel.

“Jesus. Glad to see California driving etiquette is still top shelf.”

“You know what they say,”she lilts. “You can take the road rage out of the Californian, but you… No, wait. No one says that. You absolutely can not take the road rage out of a Californian.”

She waits for his return quip, but it doesn’t come. _Come on Logan, help a girl out, here._ Instead, he scratches his wrist and says, “Uh, in your last email you said work was good. Any interesting cases recently?”

Veronica releases her hair from its impromptu ponytail and it whips forward around her face. _Well, I angered an international drug cartel and suborned a key witness in Weevil’s case against the Sheriff’s department._

Carefully, she teases a rogue strand away from her lipgloss. “Same old, mostly. Um, there was a new article about the Scott case, so we got a little rush of looky-loo jobs. ‘Trail my boyfriend,’ kind of thing. Just people in love with the whole idea of hiring a PI.”

“Did you gritty up the waiting room like you wanted?”

“Ha.” She remembers writing that joke to him in an email a few weeks ago, shakes her head in mock sorrow. “I tried. Oh, how I tried. I turned down all of the lights, and let the file folders stack up—” Logan’s lips quirk in a smile and she warms to the banter, mimes smoking a cigarette. “—took to chain smoking in the waiting room…”

“Every PI needs a femme fatale.” He arcs a dramatic eyebrow. “Want me to buy a tight black dress? Sit on your couch and flash my legs while I weep into a handkerchief?”

“Only if you’re planning to shave. And no stubble, either, mister. Smooth gams on my dame, or no gams at all.”

Logan kisses his fingertips like an Italian chef and she smiles, bringing one sandaled foot up to rest on the car seat.

“Anyway, it’s mostly been penny-ante stuff. Good for the bottom line, but not terribly exciting. Dad’s taking a lot of them.”

“He’s still doing good?”

“Back up to a full day schedule.”

“Yeah, you mentioned that in your email.”

Veronica bites her lip and leans back in her seat, abruptly running out of steam again. She shouldn’t have emailed so damn much, apparently. Logan subsides back into silence as well, taking a deep breath in and hanging his elbow casually out the side of the car, while the sun sparks golden glints in his arm hair.

With him sitting right there next to her, she’s starting to realize that the ghostly memory of his aftershave that she’s been nurturing for months was wrong. In person it’s deeper and richer, warm with the scent of his skin, and layers to it that she couldn’t call to mind in his absence.

Before he left, she’d watched him pack two bottles of the aftershave, wrapped in socks and nestled into the center of his seabag, something ridiculously expensive with an unpronounceable French name. Woodsy pine and…mint? Expensive male bottled and guaranteed to give her pleasurable goosebumps with every sniff. Had those two small-ish bottles lasted the whole six months? He probably doesn’t wear it every day when he’s, well, doing whatever. Flying. Maybe he—

“Hey, which exit?” Logan asks as he downshifts and merges one lane to the right.

She cocks her head. “For Dick’s? You know how to get there.”

“Veronica, I just got home and I...I do NOT want to see Dick right now.”

Instinct kicks in and she aims a leer in his direction. “I do.”

His fingers tighten on the wheel, and at least _that’s_ a reaction she knows how to read. “God, I hope so. In furtherance of that goal…which exit to your new place?”

“Estes Drive. It’s in the Dog Beach area, you know, near where Gianni’s used to be?”

“Yeah.” He brings a hand down to downshift again and, when he’s done, moves it over so it rests heavy and warm on her thigh.

She startles a little. It feels like...it feels like when she first came back to Neptune. Like his touch is somehow still off-limits to her. Still dangerous.

It’s not awkward. Nope.

She catches Logan glancing over at her to check if his hand placement is okay, and she puts her own hand in the corresponding place on Logan’s thigh. He tenses under her fingers, which makes her smile internally and relax a little. She can remember how to do this. They have HOT sex, Logan is the best she’s ever had, she missed him for nine years and then for six months, and all of the “sex-deprived-sailor” bantering she’s been subjected to from various sources suggests she’s in for a marathon sex-fest of epic proportions. Get it, girl.

As she trails her hand a little further up his thigh, Logan wriggles a little.

“Don’t start anything you can’t finish.” He’s joking, but she raises her eyebrows at the challenge.

“When have I _ever_ started something I didn’t intend to finish? You know I’m all about the follow through.”

“You are a long game girl, it’s true, but your options are limited here.” He gestures with his chin at the open road in front of them.

“Hm, well this giant toddler onesie you call a flight suit does complicate things.” She waits for him to chance another glance over at her and then she bites her lip flirtatiously, her mood improving even more as that familiar red flush appears high on his cheekbones beneath his tan.

“Veronica.” His warning is low and husky, sending a shot of heat right between her legs, and she’s maybe not teasing so much anymore. _Yes, this is good. I’m into this. Reclaim the banter. Reclaim the sex._ She reaches out and toys with the zipper tab hanging just below the hollow of his throat.

“Aren’t you…” She slides the zipper down a few inches, revealing a large slice of the fitted dark blue t-shirt beneath, which is clinging slightly to Logan’s skin presumably with residual sweat from the flight. “…hot?”

“The hottest. If you’ll recall you signed notarized papers attesting to that fact.”

“I don’t recall. Perhaps a little evidence is required?” She slides the zipper down another inch, makes a moue of distress and slides it back up his chest a bit, and then, with a quick _zzzsh_ of teeth, all the way down to his waist.

“Veronica!”

_Ha! He didn’t think I’d really do it._

“I always wondered what you wore under here.” She slides her hand into the suit at his waist where it gapes open, finger walking her way across the bare strip of skin between Logan’s t-shirt and the boxer-briefs that are his only other clothing.

He sucks in his breath. “Shit, Veronica…please.”

With a deliberate click, she unbuckles her seatbelt, and leans over, “Please, no? Or please…yes?”

“Fuck.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

She wiggles her way partially across the center console, ducking under his arms, until she is half in his lap. He brings one hand down to grasp her hips, but she scoots away. “Ah ah! Hands at ten and two, Lieutenant, we wouldn’t want to be unsafe.”

This has escalated fast—the banter carrying her well beyond the point where she’d intended to stop. And now they haven’t even kissed yet and she’s faced with…well, with Logan’s dick, a clear mouthwatering shape twitching and swelling behind the light blue fabric of his boxer-briefs.

She curves her hand around him, feeling oddly private and tender, her torso wedged under the steering wheel, body canted at an angle that makes the blood rush to her head, face tight and skin hot, surrounded by the smell of his sweat, skin, cock. It’s easier down here, where she’s not looking at him. She squeezes lightly and strokes along the length.

“Shit, Veronica, just—just wait. I’ll pull—“ She gives him another stroke and his hips arc up off the seat. “I’ll pull over.”

“Keep driving,” she says in a low voice, bringing her face lower, hovering over the bulge of his erection, blowing a hot stream of breath on it through his boxers. “Keep going.”

Pulling the waistband of the briefs down a little, she frees just the top of his cock to thrust up flushed and hard inside the screening flaps of the open flight suit. God, he’s gorgeous.

_Am I really going to do this?_

She glances up. Above her, Logan is breathing hard, attention desperately on the road. “Nff—Veronica. God.”

_Yup. I am._

She darts her tongue out to lick over the head, just a little tease, then she’ll pull away, let him drive them somewhere private so they can indulge in these giddy hormones she’s finally drenched in.

“Fuck!” Logan’s curse at the touch of her mouth makes her smile around him, kiss the strip of bare abdomen next to his cock.

Behind them, the high pitched wail of a police siren cuts on, loud and startling. Veronica pulls her head back, just as blue and red flashing lights start to strobe in the rearview mirror.

“Shit shit shit shit,” Logan mutters as he throws on the blinker and steers one-handed to the side of the road, the other hand busy with tucking himself back in and jerking at the zipper of his flight suit.

“Oh, fuck.” Veronica slides her way back into her own seat and reaches out to help Logan with the zipper, trying desperately to suppress the horrified giggles that are bubbling up out of her. “Here—“

“Shit!”

“Here, let me—“ She bats his hands away and swiftly draws the zipper back up.

Logan drops his head back against the headrest. “God, I don’t even want to think about what kind of UCMJ violation this is.”

She lets out an explosive snort, spots the uniformed deputy leaving his patrol car and walking toward them. “Shh—sh. He’s coming.”

It’s not a Chippie, like she’d thought initially, it’s a Balboa County car—they must have passed over the county line while she was…distracted. The deputy, who stands a careful distance away from the driver’s side door as he assesses them, is unfamiliar to Veronica. He takes in her appearance—she resists the urge to reach up and smooth her hair—and the way the zipper of Logan’s hastily closed flight suit is snagged on his t-shirt about halfway up his chest.

“Do you know why I pulled you over?”

Logan responds instantly. “Yes sir, doing ten over the speed limit with an unbelted passenger.”

“I clocked you at thirteen over, actually. License and registration.”

“Veronica, can you grab the registration out of the glove box?” Logan holds his hands up carefully and gestures to the back seat. “My license is in my seabag.” He waits for the deputy’s nod before he reaches back and rifles through the bag, pulling out his billfold, and extracting his driver’s license and handing it over.

Veronica passes over the registration document and the deputy taps both against his palm, nods at Logan’s flightsuit. “Navy?

Veronica, sensing a possible out, tilts her head and smiles the sweetest, most proud-to-be-an-American smile she can muster. “He just got back from deployment.”

The deputy raises his sunglasses to the top of his head and looks from Logan’s license back up to Logan. “You coming off the _Truman_?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know Commander Haverford?”

Logan’s mouth tightens, the muscle at the corner of his jaw twitching. “Yes, sir, I do. He’s my CO.”

“Huh. That’s my partner’s cousin.” The deputy hooks a thumb back in the direction of the patrol car behind him.

Logan’s eyes widen fractionally. “Well, isn’t that just...” several creative swear words seem to hang in the air, unsaid, “...an amazing coincidence.”

“It sure is.” The deputy flicks his mirrored sunglasses back into place. “You two wait right here.”

As he turns and heads back to his car, Logan lets his head drop back briefly to rest against the headrest. He straightens up almost immediately and starts to tug at the tab of his zipper, trying to extricate the wad of t-shirt fabric caught in the teeth. “Oh, fuck me.”

“I tried.” A sputtering laugh bursts out of Veronica. She leans forward to bang her forehead against the dashboard. This is not funny. It’s not.

“Veronica.”

“Your CO, Jesus H... Could you get in _trouble_ for this?” She turns her head to look at him, still bent forward, pressing her temple into the smooth surface of the dash.

“No. I don’t know. Maybe? If our deputy likes to gossip to his cousin?” With a final jerk, the t-shirt finally comes free, and Logan smooths out the bunch, sliding the zipper back up to its correct position. “Fuck, his _cousin.”_ He turns to look at her and the expression on his face… she can’t help giggling again.

“Oh GOD. You—“

“ _Don’t_ laugh, it’s not—” He snorts. “It’s not f-funny. Haverford is the biggest asshole and—”

“You were—“

“Shh—stop. Stop. I can’t.”

“You _shh_ , Logan, he’s coming back!”

“Hey, Veronica.”

It’s not the same deputy.

“Norris!” She chirps, after a gaping second. “Got a new partner?”

“Yeah.” Norris, unlike the previous deputy, steps in close to the car.

“You remember Logan, from, uh…” High school doesn’t necessarily seem like the right memory to invoke, here, given that they’re trying to avoid a public indecency charge. And then there’s...the cousin connection.

Norris nods. “Hi, Logan. It’s been a while.”

“Yes, Deputy Clayton, it has.” Logan’s tone projects a chipper shield.

“So you’re in Nick’s squadron, huh?”

“Yup. Let's go Hawks.”

“I’m sure he’s just as much of a prick now as he was when he stole my nun-chucks, broke my mom’s vase, and blamed me for it.” Norris makes a face and about half of Logan’s tension vanishes, along with most of his slick veneer. “Look, you guys can go with just a warning. Allen back there is a big military fan, and he’s new to the department so he doesn’t know anything about…well, anything. Just slow down, okay?” He sighs and hands Logan back his license and registration. “Anyway. Veronica, I just needed to tell you something.”

Surprised, she blinks. “What’s up?”

“That car you were looking for - two door silver Mazda?”

“Yeah.”

“I just spotted it maybe five minutes ago, heading over toward Stargaze. Was gonna give you a call when Allen spotted you guys, uh, speeding.”

Veronica keeps her face as impassive as possible. “Did you check the plates?”

“Hm, partial only. Match on the first three. I’m about eighty percent positive it’s your guy.”

“Shit. Well, thanks Norris.”

“No problem.” He flashes her a slightly uneasy grin-grimace combination and lumbers away, back to his car.

Veronica deflates back into her seat. “God, let’s get out of here.”

“Splitting, like the proverbial banana.” Logan shoves the car into gear and eases it back into the swiftly moving traffic.

“Could that have _been_ any more awkward?”

“Well, he could have brought up the time in seventh grade when I tried to headbutt him and my braces got caught in that lovely spiked chain necklace he used to wear.”

“Ah yes, I was out sick that day. I bet if I looked hard enough I could find the letter Lilly wrote me detailing the incident.” She grins. “She folded it into a heart and everything.”

“I bet if you look hard enough, you can still see the scar on my lip.” He mutters. “ _Not_ shaped like a heart.”

As he merges in between two eighteen-wheelers, she runs through the implications of their close encounter of the lawman kind in her mind. “Hey, when did you last see Norris?”

“He came and broke up a fight at one of Carrie’s parties a year or so back.”

Logan is using that careful tone he has sometimes when he doesn’t want to tread into Carrie-bashing, so Veronica takes an educated guess. “The one on the video.”

He sighs, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “What Norris said about the plates…that was for a case, right?”

She cocks her head in annoyance. “So, we’re changing the subject? Just like that?”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean…” He waves a frustrated hand. “Yes, it was the party on the video.”

“Okay then Sir-Fights-A-Lot, yes, the Mazda _is_ a car I’ve been tracking for a case.”

“Oh. My. God, Becky. Look at her...plates?”

“Something like that.” She shakes her head. “No, actually, nothing like that. What?”

“I was gonna go for: ‘I hit big dicks and I cannot lie,’” he shrugs, “But…”

“Yeah, you’d just be opening yourself up to innuendo.” She gestures down at his crotch and then is swamped with the memory of what she’d been doing not fifteen minutes earlier. A flush creeps up from her cheeks to her hairline.

“Can’t have that,” he says, and just like that, the awkwardness is back. Veronica sighs and starts to calculate time-tables in her head. This is the absolute worst time for the Mazda to be on the move. She needs to go get the documents NOW, but...She casts a conflicted look at Logan.

“Uh-oh, I know that face. Do you need to do something for that case now?”

“Yeah…” She looks off to the side. The minivan they’d passed earlier is coming up fast on the right. “Yeah, I do. I’m sorry, but the whole thing is kind of time sensitive.”

“Veronica Mars,” he says, softly, in a tone she can’t quite place. He reaches out to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “What can I do?”

“Can you just drop me off at the office, maybe? We’re close. I’ll grab my dad’s car and you can head back ho—to my place, or wherever.“

“Can you tell me what’s going on?”

She hesitates for a long moment. Before, her work had never been a part of their relationship, never a part of…them. But she’s trying to do things differently this time; trying to be a partner to her Dad instead of going it alone on cases; trying to be a real partner to Logan, not just a girlfriend.

_Or whatever the hell we are._

But, god, does she have to test that resolution with _this_ case?

Choosing her words carefully, Veronica tries. “I need to retrieve some papers for a client before a legal meeting on Monday. She’s someone I kind of owe.”

Logan holds up a hand. “Client confidentiality. I get it.”

“Yeah. That Mazda Norris spotted, if it’s on the move, it means her landlady is likely gone. It might be the only time I can sneak in and get what I need.”

“What _do_ you need?”

“Proof of rental. The landlady is trying to deny my client access to her apartment, claiming back rent is owed and that there’s damage to the property. She changed the locks while R-the client was away and won’t let her in to retrieve her stuff. They’re going up in front of an arbiter on Monday, and my client is worried the landlord will destroy her documentation.”

“So you need to break into this client’s apartment?”

“It’s not really B&E—or, I guess the case is a little fuzzy. I have the renter’s permission to enter, but not the property owner’s. Depending on how the arbitration shakes out…” She makes a see-saw motion with her hand.

“Okay then.” Logan changes lanes abruptly, exiting the freeway and scanning along the side street until he spots an old strip mall, its parking lot deserted, four of the five storefronts for rent. He pulls the Beemer into a space behind what looks like an old bank building.

“Logan, what are you doing?”

“I need to change. I’m not really supposed to do anything other than go directly to and from the base in this bad boy.” He gestures down at his flight suit. “And given what we’re about to get up to, being out of uniform seems advisable in general.”

Veronica holds her hands up. “Whoa there, Major Tom. I can handle this, I’ll drop you at Dick’s, or wherever. I won’t be gone long.”

“Veronica, one: Major Tom was an astronaut and a Zoomie. Two: I have _zero_ doubt you can handle this, but I don’t want to be dropped off like unwanted luggage. I’m coming.”

She twirls one finger in the air, mildly irritated but not quite sure why. “Circle the carousel one more time while you think about that, Samsonite.”

“I’ll be your lookout, or whatever, give you a birdcall, or—” he whistles the opening notes of ‘Dixie.’ “Look sharp, Mrs. Peel, the game’s afoot.”

“Wow. That was wrong in about sixteen different ways.”

“Veronica,” He reaches out and puts his fingers under her chin, gently tilting her face up so that she’s looking directly at him. “I missed you. I know I’m being weird, but I don’t want to…to get dropped off right now. Can I please come with you?”

His finger is smoothing feather-lightly over the pulse at the base of her jawline and relaxation melts, warm and tender, through her. Unfair. He’d found that particular weakness their first summer together and only deployed it when he really meant business. She doesn’t want to drop him off. She still hasn’t quite decided exactly which of her body’s conflicting desires she _does_ want, but Logan leaving is definitely not the answer.

“Okay, but this is a one-time thing. And you’ve got to _listen_ to me. Do what I say.”

He grins and releases her chin, dropping a kiss on her forehead that sends a jolt right through her. “Oh, I am _very_ good at obeying orders these days.”

He hops out of the car and leans over the backseat door to rummage through his seabag while Veronica stays in the passenger seat, considering options for the case.

If the Mazda is out and about, then Mrs. Barnes is almost certainly not at home. Stargaze Avenue is only a few blocks away, so hopefully the landlady was just leaving, instead of just arriving home.  It shouldn’t be a problem to scale the fence and—

He mind zips several steps ahead and she pulls out her phone, tapping out a quick text to her client and double checking that she remembers the street layout correctly on Google Maps.

When she looks up from the phone, Logan is standing next to the car, shaking out what looks like a tightly folded pair of jeans and a t-shirt. He gives them one last business-like snap and then drapes them over the door. He turns and props his ass against the side of the car, bending over to loosen the laces of his boots.

God _damn_ , when did he get so hot? It's like...he was always Logan, always good looking, but...look at him. He’s like a centerfold. A military calendar in the making. Buns of July. The muscles in his ass bunch enticingly as he turns around and Veronica is distracted enough by the view that what exactly he is doing—and where—doesn’t really register until he reaches for the zipper of his flightsuit. 

She raises her eyebrows. “You know, we’re going to have to make a pit stop at Mars Investigations. You can change there. Privately.”

“You didn’t say.”

“You didn’t ask.”

He shrugs and keeps unzipping, his lower half screened by the bottom of the car.

She smirks at him while he undresses. In a parking lot. “Yeah, I guess I’d want to get out of the onesie as soon as possible, too.”

“You know you find the suit sexy.”

“Oh yeah, the drop-waisted diaper look really does it for me.”

“ _Everyone_ thinks the flightsuit is hot shit, Veronica. The Brass even has to restrict when we can wear them so the peons don’t feel like we’re showboating.”

“Mm…unisex coveralls. My panties are dropping as we speak.” She bats her eyes dramatically.

Logan grins at her and does a bit of a striptease, pulling out his arms out of the suit and flexing his guns dramatically and unnecessarily while wrapping the sleeves loosely around his waist. He snags the new t-shirt—dark grey—and swaps it locker-room style for the sweaty blue model he’d been wearing under the suit, frustratingly revealing only brief slices of ab and back muscles.

Veronica leans back and yawns, patting one hand exaggeratedly over her mouth. “Gee, floor shows just ain’t what they used to be.”

“If you came over here, Veronica,” he begins, in a low bedroom voice designed to either make her laugh or turn her on. “I might be convinced to give it a little more flair.”

A pleasant warm heat, low in her belly, re-kindles almost immediately. _Ah, turned on it is, then._

“No, no. Go on. If you’re coming on the case with me, I want to see what…skills you have to offer.”

“You want me to strip my way onto your B&E team?”

She shrugs insouciantly and he grins, shaking his head. He steps out of the suit and then gives it a little twirl and tosses it at her. Veronica grimaces when the scratchy material smacks her in the face. “Classy. And you without your G-String.” She shakes the flight suit out with both hands, giving it a sloppy fold, stroking the texture of the odd, stiff material. “What the hell is this thing made of, anyway?”

“NoMex. It doesn’t breathe for shit, which sucks on the flight deck, but it’s fire resistant.”

He wiggles into his jeans and then bends over again, presumably to re-lace his boots.

“Fire...resistant?”

“It’s a barrier to heat.” He says, to the pavement. “Doesn’t melt to your skin like nylon or whatever.”

Veronica swallows. Well that fun fact extinguishes whatever spark of arousal she might have been kindling. “I should change, too.” She looks down at her tank, shorts, and sandals. “This isn’t exactly ideal wear for skulking. All I have in the car are boots, though.”

“You don’t have a change at the office?”

“No. I took everything home to do laundry after the Morrison case.”

Logan raises his eyebrows and she remembers she never mentioned that particular case in her emails. Leaning over, she takes the keys out of the ignition, clicking the trunk button on the fob and then stuffing them in her back pocket while she avoids any scrutiny he might be throwing her way.

The boots she has in the trunk are better footwear for B & E than her strappy sandals, although perhaps not by much. They’re an old and battered Doc Marten style, straight out of her grunge period. No heel, but a clunky rubber sole and lace-up grommets that go to about mid-way up her calf. They’ll protect her feet better than the sandals, but they’re heavy. Veronica generally wears them when she knows she’ll be clomping through mud, or on uncertain terrain.

Still…she slides her feet into them and laces briskly, finally straightening up, grimacing. “Well, this is a fashion forward look.”

She glances to the other side of the car for Logan’s reaction; he’s frozen, with his belt half-threaded through the loops, his gaze glued to the expanse of leg between her boots and her short turquoise shorts.

“Logan?”

“Shh, long dormant high school fantasies are kicking into high gear over here.”

She leans flirtatiously against sun-warmed car. “Give me, maybe, two hours of work and then…we’ll see what we can do.”

“Yeah?” His eyes hold some of that old question she hates to see there. It's been softened by their nine years of maturity, but not completely buried. Maybe never completely buried, so she tries to fill her response with a whole world of feeling. 

“Oh yeah.”

“Veronica, I…” He trails off and they stare at each other across the car. _God_ , she wants him all of a sudden. Six months—nine years and then six _long_ months and that look in his eyes and what the _hell_ is she waiting for?

There’s a moment of frozen hunger and then she bolts around the front of the car towards him, only to find him meeting her there, half-way. They collide, and she’s pretty sure she manages to step on one of his feet with her heavy boots, but she turns the resulting trip into a pretty graceful recline on the hood of the car— _take that, Universe_ —stretching herself out like a centerfold and beckoning Logan closer. The case can wait.

Everything can wait.

His hands fit around her waist almost tentatively and he leans in, hovering above her while she tilts back, pressed against the car frame, trying to wiggle both towards him and away from the hard lump of the car keys in her back pocket, when suddenly—

“Aah-OOH-GA! Aah-OOH-GA! Aah-OOH-GA! WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP!”

The fucking car alarm.

_Okay Universe, you win this round._

________________

Ten minutes later, Veronica turns the key in the glass door that leads to Mars Investigations’ walk-up and shoulders it open, Logan trailing close behind her.

“What do we need to stop at here for, anyway?” He’s cheerful again, having shaken off their disruption in the parking lot better than she had. Of course, his ear hadn’t been pressed right up against the hood of the car, either.

“I need my camera. Never B & E without it.”

“I’m actually surprised you came to pick me up without it.”

At the top of the stairs, Veronica unlocks the office door, breathing in the familiar dusty-hot smell of the old building. Logan walks in after her, looking around a little and noting the changes the last six months have wrought.

“Nice set up.” He nods at the computer array on the front desk. “Mac’s?”

“Yup. Our very own electronic Mac…Guyver.” She shoots a finger gun at Mac’s monitor.

“Har har.”

“You know what?” Veronica spins around to face him, walking backwards in the direction of her office. “I think you lost your sense of humor somewhere out on the deep blue sea. That was _funny_.”

He picks up a paperclip off of Mac’s desk, tosses it in the air. “Hey! I’ll have you know I’m considered the life of the floating party.”

“Never let a water-based pun opportunity pass you by?”

“Not even for the halibut.” He winces. “No, sorry. That was unworthy. I retract that answer and submit instead: Not on porpoise.”

“Jesus, you’re going to need a complete reboot. I’ll have to rebuild you from scratch.”

“Not just a tuna up?” He waggles his eyebrows.

She smiles sweetly, backing through her office door. “Keep up the puns and you’ll be swimming with the fishes.”

He follows her into the office, rotating his shoulders and then grabbing one elbow to stretch the arm behind his head. “Well, if there are deployment-related deficiencies in my otherwise bright and shining self, it’ll be the last time for a little while, anyway.”

Veronica pauses with her hand on the stack of files at the edge of her desk. “Really? No more long trips on big boats?”

“Not for a few years anyway.” She feels lighter and looser all of a sudden. “I told you my shore rotation starts soon.”

“Yeah.” _But I didn’t know what that meant._

She moves around behind her desk and flips open the dark brown folder containing the case file she needs, leaning down to double check Mrs. Barnes’ address. Logan comes around to stand directly behind her, peering over her shoulder at the pages.

“That address sounds familiar.” He’s crowding her, almost touching at several points. The back of her neck starts tingling. “Hey, isn’t that where—“

“Veronica?” Her client’s voice calls from the outer entry. Logan’s eyes widen in horror.

 “—Ruby Jetson lives!?” He finishes, in a furious whisper.

Veronica closes her eyes for a moment. “Um, yes.”

“Oh, you are so dead.”

“Veronica, are you here? I got your text.” Ruby’s footsteps come closer to the office door.

“Shit!” Logan looks around the room frantically and then, to Veronica’s complete and utter surprise, he drops into a crouch and tucks himself into the knee-well of her overly large desk.

“Logan, what the hell?”

“Shh!” His arm snakes out from under the desk and wraps around her upper thighs, pulling her towards the desk so that she falls into the chair, and then urging the chair in closer to his hiding spot, pulling it forward to shield the parts of him that inevitably don’t fully fit underneath.

She’s trying, unsuccessfully, to untangle herself when the office door opens. It’s Ruby, clad in ratty skinny jeans, clodhopper boots similar to the ones Veronica is wearing, and a Pokémon t-shirt.

“Hiding from me, Veronica Mars? I thought we had a deal.”

Veronica tries to stand, but Logan’s hand is firm behind her knee, anchoring her in place. He’s curled himself into as small a shape as possible, but he’s still six feet of male in a three-foot by four-foot hole. Her legs are crammed into the knee-well around him, hooked over him, forcing her to lay back in the chair at an awkward angle that she tries to make look nonchalant.

“Ruby! What are you doing here?”

“You sent me a text.”

“Yes. One that said that _I_ was going to take care of things.”

“You’re going to break in?” Ruby throws her arms out wide. “The old she-bat is gone?”

“Mrs. Barnes does seem to be out right now,” Veronica says in her firmest, most client-placating I’ve-got-this voice, trying desperately to ignore the warm, breathing male under her desk. Between her legs.

“I’m coming with you.”

“No, you’re not.”

Ruby glares at her, then drops into one of the client chairs in front of the desk. _Fuck._

“How will _you_ know where to find the documents?” she demands.

“Uh,” Veronica pats the file folder in front of her. “You told me where they were.”

“What if she’s _moved_ them?”

“Well, if she has then you won’t know where she moved them to any more than I would.”

Ruby is unfazed by this logic. “But I know her _ways_ ,” she says, darkly and portentously. “I’ll be able to get into her mind. Think where she might have squirreled them away.”

Under the desk, Logan is vibrating in a way that suggests forcefully suppressed laughter. Veronica gives him a jab with the heel of her boot.

“Listen, Ruby. You shouldn’t be there.” _Because you’re a loose cannon._ “Because you have to maintain the moral high ground in this case. You have a legal right to enter that apartment—Mrs. Barnes hasn’t followed the eviction process—but it’ll look bad if you’re caught breaking in. Make you look shady.”

“ _How_ is that any different than if you’re caught breaking in for me?”

 _Curses. Logic._ “I don’t plan on getting caught.”

Ruby raises a smug eyebrow. “Didn’t work out so well for you last time, did it?”

Veronica wiggles a little in her chair, trying to gain another inch of upright height and authority, but the effort is futile. She’s pinned by Logan’s body. She’ll have to brazen her way out of this one still sitting. “Ruby, I’m a professional. You hired me. Let me do my job.”

“But…” Ruby plays with a strand of her hair, consideringly. “What if you need a look-out?”

“I’ve got that covered.”

“You do? Who?”

 _Whoops._ Veronica barrels forward. “I’ve been surveilling the house for two weeks. I know the entrances. I know the only time Mrs. Barnes leaves the house is when her daughter takes her to run errands. I know that they always take her Mazda, to keep it running smoothly, and I know that they’re always gone at least three hours. At least one of which we have already wasted. If we take too much longer, I’ll lose my window.”

Ruby gets up and paces back and forth in front of the desk in that slump-shouldered way she has before throwing herself back into the chair. “Okay, _listen_. I still think I should go with you, but let me take a second, check in with my inner Om.”

“Your…?”

“My inner Om. God, Veronica, have you not read _Journey to Inner Peace_? You need to; it’ll change your life. I was spiraling after Bonnie died, BUT—” Her hands fly up so suddenly that she almost smacks herself in the face. “Guru Matishava taught me to find my own truth.” She brings her palms together in an exaggerated yogi-prayer gesture and says, serenely, “Just because those we love have left us in this life, does _not_ mean we can no longer turn to them.”

Logan is ominously still under the desk.

“In your inner Om.”

“Yes. Now, shh.” Ruby closes her eyes and begins to take in deep heavy breaths through her nose. Veronica stares, waiting for her eyes to re-open, but they don’t. The breaths go on and on in harsh rhythm, with a little bit of a whistle to them on the exhale. Ruby has a cold.

 _This is not how I expected today to go_.

Under the desk, light fingers caress around her calf, stroking, and Logan lays his cheek softly against the inside of her knee. She’d been more than half expecting him to try some shenanigans, trapped down there between her legs, but he’d left her alone while she tried to deal with Ruby. Now, the way he’s resting his cheek on her feels more comfort-seeking than prurient.

_God, I missed him._

She checks in with Ruby. Eyes still screwed shut, still heavy-breathing her way towards either her Om or a fainting spell.

Veronica slips one hand under the desk, rubbing lightly over the part of Logan’s hair that isn’t pressed directly against the underside of the desk. The closely shorn texture feels soft and prickly against her palm, not unpleasant, but not exactly Logan either.

She can feel him breathe in once, twice, under her hand, slow and deep in comparison to the Lamaze style hyperventilating Ruby is doing across the desk. He tilts his head up a little, breathes in again. It’s almost like he’s…oh, _fuck_. He’s smelling her. He’s directly between her legs and he’s _smelling_ her.

The realization sends a rush of heat through her body and she’s horrifyingly aware that there is suddenly a lot more for him to smell. The lightweight cotton of her shorts and underwear can’t be doing much to mask the scent of her arousal. Not from such close range.

Logan takes another long inhale and then turns his head slightly, nuzzling the sharp blade of his nose into her skin. The flutter of his eyelashes brush against her inner thigh, then his lips and she feels the small touches resonating deep inside of her, softening her sex with more liquid heat. Oh shit, she’s going to need to change shorts after this.

He lays a light kiss against her thigh, just an inch below the hemline of her shorts, and she scoots forward in her chair, opening and encouraging, in spite of herself.

He shifts a little under her, and suddenly he’s pressing closed lips right to the center seam of her shorts. A tender kiss that jolts through layers of cotton to kick-start the throbbing in her clit. He bows his head forward, nuzzling into her with nose and forehead and—

“Okay!” Ruby chirps loudly from across the desk. She slaps her hands down on its surface, as if in decision, and Logan startles, jerking his head away from Veronica and banging it sharply against the underside of the desk.

“OUCH!” Veronica yells, trying to provide cover for his muffled curse word. “THAT HURT!”

“Veronica…are you okay?”

“Yeah, sorry. Just banged my knee into the desk really hard. So, what did your Om say?”

“You don’t have to be snotty about it, Veronica Mars. You could really stand some inner truth yourself.” Ruby folds her hands primly on the desk. “But Guru Matishava says that those without grace can’t find truth, so I guess you’re just out of luck.”

“Remind me why I’m helping you again?”

“Because I hired you. _BFF_.”

“Right.” She sighs at the reminder, and pastes a sincere smile on her face. “It actually doesn’t matter what your Om says, Ruby. You can’t come with me, and that’s final.”

“Lucky for you, my Om agrees. For now. My intense spiritual energy might be a distraction to you. I’ll wait here for word.” Ruby leans back in her chair, propping her booted feet up on the far side of Veronica desk.

“No!” Veronica’s exclamation startles Ruby enough that the woman overbalances and tips the chair back, landing with a hard thud, and then quickly scrambling her way back upright and into the chair. The delay gives Veronica time to think of a semi-plausible excuse. “I can’t possibly leave you alone in the office. We have confidential materials stored here.”

“Then we can meet after, at Java the Hut.”

“Yes, yes definitely. That sounds like a plan,” Veronica concedes. Logan shifts, restless, underneath her, and she tries to mentally telegraph to him. _No. No, that will not be happening_. “I’ll call you when I have the documents.”

“Okay, Veronica Mars, I’m trusting you.” Finally, Ruby stands to leave. She carefully smooths down the hem of her t-shirt and shoulders her bag—a black, studded messenger tote that looks remarkably similar to Veronica’s own. She clomps out of the room, stopping at the door to whip her head around dramatically and warn, “And do NOT look through my bedroom. I’ll _know_.”

Veronica releases her breath as Ruby closes the office door decisively behind her, and her footsteps retreat through the lobby. The final closing of the outer door seems to release some knot of tension in the room. There is a long moment of silence and then Logan’s voice, amused, comes floating out from under her desk.

“Well _that_ was different.”

Veronica pushes back, untangling her legs from around his shoulders and almost tipping backward herself in the desk chair. Logan puts a hand on the leather seat to steady her as he crawls out.

“Ouch. Remind me not to hide under there again.” He dusts his hands on his jeans. “I thought the cockpit was small…”

“What were you _doing_ under there?”

He shrugs and stretches, cracking his back. “I panicked. I never returned her call about our skating date.”

“Really? You couldn’t brazen it out?”

“I have _plans_ for this afternoon, Veronica.” He lowers his voice, lecherously. “I do not need any more complications.”

“God, so much for the poise and competence of our troops under fire.”

Logan lifts one eyebrow. “I assure you, if the enemy was lobbing _her_ there’d be a lot more running and hiding.”

She shakes her head and just sort of…tucks this whole incident away. _Can’t deal with this now. No time._

“We’ve got to get going. Here.” Veronica opens a filing cabinet drawer and rummages through, quickly, pulling out a beat up Sharks baseball hat, tossing it at Logan. “Wear this.”

“Anything for you, pookie.”

________________________

 

They park two blocks away from Mrs. Barnes’ home, in front of a large gated house that Veronica has pinpointed on previous sweeps through the neighborhood as having frequent visitors with varying kinds of high-end cars. In an area where almost no one street parks, it’s the best she can do on short notice to camouflage Logan’s ridiculous car.

Now that he’s back, she really needs to stop indulging in luxury and drive her own sensible Toyota. It blends better. 

As he gets out of the passenger seat, Logan tugs on the brim of his baseball cap, pulling it low to shade his face. She wishes she could put him in a sweatshirt, or some other figure-hiding gear, but it’s hot as shit outside and that would only make him stand out more. She grabs his hand as they walk—just a normal couple, out for a stroll, doo de doo de doo—and longs for some better camouflage.

“I wish we had a baby stroller.”

Logan’s palm is cool and dry against her sweaty one. “Seems a little sudden, Pumpkin.”

“Don’t be a dick. To blend in better. No one thinks anything of people walking with a baby stroller. Or a dog.”

“Now a dog, I could get behind.”

“Ew, Logan, don’t make me call the ASPCA.”

“Veronica!” He drops her hand in surprise and then picks it up again almost instantly. “Jesus. After six months of the guys on the boat you think I wouldn’t have walked into that one.”

“What can I say? Never underestimate the twisted mind of the small and cute.” She smirks and points a thumb at herself.

“Got it.”

“I do wish I had a dog, though.”

“A real one? Not a prop?”

“Yeah. I couldn’t in New York, I kept moving, and then—“ _And then there was Piz, and getting a dog would have meant getting a dog together._ “Here, though, maybe.”

Logan frowns. “I don’t know much about dogs, but wouldn’t it be hard with your job? Weird hours. Gone all the time.”

“Yeah.” She sighs and then squeezes his hand as Mrs. Barnes’ house comes into view. “Okay, here we go.” The neighborhood has typical Southern California landscaping, a few palm trees and lots of sparse shrubbery—aka, nowhere to hide. The wooden gate in front of the garage apartment where Ruby lives is open, just as it usually is when Mrs. Barnes is away, but they’re going to have to just brazen out walking up the driveway and hope no one sees them.

Mid-day on a Wednesday is pretty good timing for that, actually, so at least _one_ thing is going right. Logan loops his arm around her waist as they walk casually up the long driveway towards the stand-alone garage, breathing a little easier once the six-foot high privacy fence shields them from the street.

The main house is off to the right, lights off inside and no movement. Even with all of the delays, they should still have about an hour to get in and out, if Mrs. Barnes holds true to her established patterns. Still, Veronica wants to move fast, in case they were spotted.

She tugs Logan’s hand to pull him around to the shielded back of the garage, noting that the blinds are down across the large bay window that overlooks the street, so at least there’s less chance of anyone seeing them move around inside.

Last time she’d “broken in”—with Mrs. Barnes’ unwitting permission—she’d used the main door in the side of the garage, which has a narrow staircase leading to the apartment above. That door is currently sporting two shiny new padlocks and a deadbolt, however.

Veronica frowns at the door. “Okay, lock picking our way into Fort Knox, here, is option two, but it’ll be much easier if Ruby was right and—” She looks up to the second story as they round the back corner of the garage to find two open kitchen windows, curtains fluttering in the breeze. “Yup. Easy access.”

Logan follows her gaze upwards. “Why the hell would you padlock the door like there are wolves after you and then leave the windows open?”

Ruby Jetson steps out from behind a trellis covered in climbing sweet pea vines and plants her hands on her hips. “She thinks it gets stuffy with all the windows closed.”

Logan and Veronica both instinctively jerk back a startled step and Veronica can feel her mouth gape open at the sight in front of her.

Ruby has changed since she left Mars Investigations and is now in full Bonnie Deville regalia. She’s wearing a wig that Veronica has never seen her in before—not the black Cleopatra bob of Bonnie’s early career, or the bubblegum pink of her second album, but the long flowing lavender hair Logan’s ex-girlfriend had sported in the last few months of her life. The wig is eerily accurate.

The black pleather catsuit Ruby is wearing to complement it, on the other hand, looks _nothing_ like anything Carrie would ever have been caught dead in.

“Holy shit,” Logan mutters under his breath. He’s close enough to Veronica that she can feel him subtly shifting his weight back on his heels.

Ruby reaches one hand up to sweep a synthetic lavender lock away from her face. “If the old bat’d install an air-conditioning unit, it wouldn’t be a problem, but no, ‘a breeze is much cheaper, dear.’”

Veronica works her jaw, still caught off guard. Meanwhile, Ruby bats her eyes at Logan and sidles in closer, trading her nasty Mrs. Barnes impression for something softer and more insinuating. “Hi, Logan. I’m glad you’re back safe. I was worried about you.”

“I, on the other hand, knew exactly where I was at all times.”

Ruby is confused by this badinage and chooses to glare at Veronica instead of responding directly. Her purple eyeshadow is caked all the way up to her eyebrows. “ _Someone_ could have mentioned your return earlier.”

“Frankly, Ruby,” Veronica says, finally recovering, “I didn’t see how it was any of your business. And what the _fuck_ are you doing here? What about your Om?”

Ruby shrugs her shoulders. “It changed its mind.”

Logan, recovering some of his equanimity as well, releases Veronica and smiles his charming jackass shield of a smile. “Woman’s prerogative?”

“Stop it,” Veronica says, sharply to him, and then: “Ruby, you’ve got to leave.”

“No. I want to know what happens. You were never going to meet me at The Hut.”

 _True._ Narrowing her eyes, Veronica demands, “How did you even get back here before us?”

Ruby smirks. “I have my ways, Veronica Mars.”

Veronica rolls her eyes but, contrary to what she’d told Ruby back at the office, if they get caught it really _is_ better if Ruby is with them—she’s the only one with a clear legal right to be on the property. She weighs the likelihood that her stroll with Logan through the neighborhood and up the driveway in broad daylight had attracted some attention—not to mention fucking Ruby swanning around in a purple wig and pleather catsuit for fuck’s sake—and what are the odds that no one in the neighborhood has called in suspicious behavior? They need to get in and out—now. And Logan…well, she knows shit all about the military court system but anything that makes this whole escapade more legal is probably better for him.

“Fuck. Okay, look.” She points at Ruby. “You stay down here and keep watch.”

“No. You’ll look through my stuff. I’m coming up too.”

Veronica plants her hands on her hips. “Ruby, you _hired me_ to look through your stuff.”

“Not all of it!” Ruby hisses.

“Veronica…” Logan flashes her his bare wrist, where a watch would be.

“Dammit.” She strides over to Logan, grabs his arm and pulls him a few steps away. “Are you okay with this?”

“Me? This is your operation, remember. I’m just here for…” The corner of his mouth twitches a little. “Moral support?”

“Yeah, but in order to get up there…I was planning to have you hoist me up to the window.”

“Okay, and—oh. Ruby too.”

“Yeah, we’re going to have to. You okay with that?” she asks briskly.

“Veronica, she’s already stalked me and frenched me. I don’t think this could get any more awkward. Her first?”

Veronica grimaces. “I don’t want her up there by herself. The way she turned up like this…I’m worried there’s something she’s not telling me.”

“Okay then.” He claps. “Go team.”

They make their way back to Ruby, who is waiting with ill-disguised impatience, her eyebrows raised.

“So?”

After a few moments of wrangling over the order of things, Veronica steps into the basket Logan makes out of his woven fingers and lets him hoist her up to stand on his shoulders. He holds her there with an easy effort and she takes a minute to steady herself in place, one hand on the stucco wall.

When she’s steady, Logan tilts his head back a little. “Okay up there?” One hand circles her calf, just above the top of her boot.

“Yeah. Just let me…” She shifts her weight a little, using the wall for balance, reaching up to try to snag the bottom of the windowsill.

He winces. “You had to change into the clodhoppers.”

She stretches her hand upward again. Grasps only air. “I’m still a little short.”

Suspicious silence from below her.

“Oh go ahead and say it.”

“Say what?” Logan’s tone of voice would probably sound completely innocent to someone who hadn’t gone to middle school with him.

“Whatever short joke you’ve got locked and loaded.”

“I would never!” His hand slides up her calf to stroke the back of her knee. At least the extra-careful leg shave she did this morning is being appreciated.

Ruby clears her throat. “Hey, I just remembered that you bill by the hour, so we’re on my clock here. No funny business.”

“Right.”

Logan shifts his hands down, wedging one under each of Veronica’s feet. “Okay, here we go. On three. One…two…three!” He grunts on the last number, pushing his hands up and carrying Veronica the extra inches she needs to get up to window level. Despite being braced for the movement, she’s almost overset, grabbing wildly for the windowsill and grasping on with gratitude.

Logan’s hands stay under her, lifting and supporting from below as she scrambles through the open window, pushing the sliding panes up even further with her hips and ass as she works her way through.

She crawls awkwardly across the sink. A few moments of physical comedy ensue when she snags the waist of her shorts on the arm of the faucet, but thankfully no one is in the room to witness her less than graceful entrance.

She leans out the window to call the all clear just in time to spot Ruby Jetson attempting to climb her boyfriend like he’s a particularly reluctant tree.

“Ruby!”

Startled by Veronica’s hiss, Ruby falls back. Logan takes advantage of her confusion to grab her around the waist and hoist her up. Ruby is a few inches taller than Veronica, and, when Veronica crawls back up on the counter and leans out of the window, she’s able to catch Ruby’s hands and help haul her up to the point where she can grab the ledge.

Exhibiting a surprising amount of upper body strength, Ruby scrambles through the window, shimmying her way across the counter, her catsuit helping her not to get hung up on the sink the way Veronica had. When she drops into place, wig miraculously intact, Veronica leans out to call down softly to Logan. “Hang on a sec. We’ll find something to lower down to you.”

She can hear his scoff, even from fifteen feet below. He backs up a few long steps, carefully assesses the distance up to the window and then launches himself into a running start, jumping explosively, and planting one foot mid-way up the wall, propelling himself high enough to catch the ledge of the window sill with both hands.

Military calendar spread material, for sure.

Veronica and Ruby both scramble away and back up to give him room as his muscles strain in a pull up that brings him to and then through the window.

“Daaaamn,” says Ruby as he twists lithely through the narrow opening. Veronica can’t help nodding in agreement. _Damn, indeed_.

Logan pops up from his feat of athleticism, grinning. He brushes invisible dust off of the shoulder of his t-shirt and raises his eyebrows. “Where do we start?”

As they turn and survey the room, Ruby lets out a shriek, throwing her hands dramatically in the air like a magician attempting to conjure lightning. “I KNEW IT!”

The apartment has the look of a place in the midst of a move, boxes piles in haphazard stacks throughout the living-room area. Some of the room looks packed up, some looks like Ruby just left for the afternoon.

“I take it you didn’t pack any of this?”

“Um, NO.”

Mrs. Barnes has clearly been busy. Veronica purses her lips. “This lady is _so_ going down in court.”

“I’ve got to check my things!” Ruby flees into her bedroom, skidding slightly as she rounds the corner.

In the stillness that follows in her wake, Veronica sighs, tapping her fingers in her thigh. “Okay, Ruby told me earlier the rental documents were in her desk drawer files. Let’s check there first.”

Logan follows her as she leads the way through the doorless entry into the small side room that contains Ruby’s computer, desk, workspace, and evidence of her passion.

Veronica stops short and Logan almost steps on her heels. “Sorry, I forgot to—“

They both look up, half in awe, half in disgust, at the giant painted mural of Bonnie—Carrie—that fills the back wall of the room.

With a sharp intake of breath, Logan steps around her and moves directly to it. Veronica trails a step behind him, expecting some sort of quip or…whistle….or something, but he just looks quietly, until: “Carrie would have hated seeing her pores magnified like this.”

She waits a beat for him to say something else, and then says, gently. “If you think _that’s_ creepy you should see the one of you in the bathroom.”

He whips his head around, “Rea—? Jesus.”

Veronica shrugs. “Eight feet tall is a good look for your head.” She turns away from the Bonnie shrine and moves to the desk, giving him a moment. This room doesn’t seem like it’s been touched. Although neat, the desk area bears evidence of use. There’s a Verizon statement tucked under the keyboard with a confirmation number scrawled across the top of it, and a few more sealed envelopes leaning against a framed picture of a younger looking Ruby posing with a bored looking pre-teen boy who is probably her brother.

Veronica brushes her fingers across the frame. _I_ definitely _would have pegged her as an only child._

Logan comes up behind her and leans on the back of Ruby’s desk chair. “Where’s her files?”

She jerks her chin down and they both crouch to open the built in file drawer. “She said they’d be in here.”

The inside of the drawer is surprisingly organized, labeled and color-coded tabs for pay stubs, tax returns, instruction manuals, receipts, and, at the very back: “Apartment.”

The penultimate tab is labeled “Media,” and when Veronica rifles past it, a slice of a familiar looking photo catches her attention. She tries to keep going, but Logan has noticed it too, and he reaches over her shoulder to pluck the file out of the drawer.

She manages to grab the paper with the photo out of the file while he stands—a glossy page, neatly torn out of a magazine. It’s the (unauthorized) profile of her that _Vanity Fair_ ran after the Dewalt-Scott case, back in March.

Logan snaps the article out of her hands while she’s still internally swearing. His eyes light with glee. “Ooh, I tried to get a copy of this on the carrier, but nada.”

Veronica makes an instinctive jump for the article, but he holds it out of her reach and she gives up quickly. From long experience, she knows a frontal attack is useless. It’ll only make him more determined. Instead, she crosses her arms across her chest and says, witheringly. “You mean none of your Navy buddies have a subscription to _the_ premier entertainment and fashion magazine? I’m shocked.”

“Nah, I meant my land-based contacts failed to come through. Apparently _someone_ effectively threatened or bribed them all out from under me.”

Veronica examines her nails casually. “That someone does good work.”

He waves the glossy magazine page above her head. “But alas, thwarted again.”

“Logan,” she gestures toward the open file drawer. “Seriously, we need to—“

“Ah, ah!” He wags a finger at her. “ _Someone_ never learned the most important lesson elementary school had to offer: sometimes you need to Drop Everything and Read.”

“I think the lesson _you_ should have taken to heart was Duck and Cover.” Despite herself, she takes a swat at him.

He holds her at arm’s length and skims through the first paragraph of the article, reading out loud. “Yadda yadda, shocking crimes in the glittering seaside resort town of Neptune, yadda yadda…OOH.”

Veronica buries her face in her hands as Logan lights in a gleeful smirk and recites. “‘…now meet the _petite blonde detective_ at the heart of these sensational cases.’”

“The reporter is a hack. He was mad because I declined to be interviewed,” Veronica mutters.

“’Veronica Mars,’” Logan continues reading out loud, “‘a diminutive 5”1’, hardly looks imposing as she stalks out of the Neptune Sheriff’s station, long tresses dancing in the wind.’ Gee, I think this guy had a _crush_ on you, sweetie.”

“He made me sound like Crime Fighter Barbie. Mac got a Malibu Stacy doll, shaved her head to make her look punk, and stuck her on the receptionist’s desk for about a week.”

Logan regards the article with unalloyed glee. “This’ll make great bedtime reading.” He folds it with a precise crease and sticks it in his back pocket. “I don’t think Ruby’ll mind if I take this as payment for services rendered, do you?”

Veronica breathes out deeply through her nose and summons a smile. “Logan.” She croons his name affectionately, sidling in close to him and wrapping her arms briefly around his waist. “Baby, sweetie, honey-pie.” She brings her hands up and claps them on either side of his face. “We need to get back to work. Now! Come on, rental contract.”

Logan rubs his cheeks and steps away from her, saluting smartly. “Aye, aye! He said to the miniscule golden-haired investigator.”

“LOGAN.”

“Sheesh. I’m on it.” He bends over to retrieve the file and she pats his butt affectionately. He shoots her a startled look that transitions to a heat-filled smolder before returning his attention to the files, missing the smooth motion of Veronica’s hand as she slips the purloined article into her messenger bag.

With a secret grin at her conquest, Veronica leans over his shoulder. Logan deftly plucks a few stapled pages out of the “Apartment” file and holds them out to her. “This look like the right stuff?”

Veronica scans the document—rental agreement, duly signed and witnessed, the term of lease not up until next January and…yep, the standard move-out clause. “This is perfect. Exactly what we need.” She folds it, too, and sticks it in the outer pocket of her bag—carefully away from the magazine article. “Let’s just grab Ruby and we can skedaddle.”

“So,” Logan laces his fingers together and stretches them out in front of him with a pop. “What do I get for being a good Junior Detective?”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve got some star stickers back in my drawer at the office.”

“Are they gold?”

“Mmhm…” Somehow they’ve migrated closer together. “And they say ‘#1 Student!’ on them.” She trails one finger up the center of his t-shirt.

“Good, because I don’t accept anything less than first place.” His hands land on her hips, pulling her in and fingering the strip of skin immediately under her t-shirt.

“I seem to remember that.” Her voice has gone husky.

“Can I choose where you put the sticker?” He leans in towards her a little and she can feel herself drawing upwards, closer, caught in that magnetic pulse that is cycling between them.

“Sure, I’ll affix it to the—” she breathes deeply, drifting closer to his lips so that she’s almost whispering, “—school-appropriate location of your choice, #1 Student.”

Logan’s chuckle turns into a groan as her hand settles on the back of his neck, he leans down and—

Something kicks her, hard, in the back of the ankle. She jerks forward, smashing her mouth into the hard point of Logan’s chin.

“OW!”

Veronica looks up, rubbing her lips with her hand to see Ruby looming behind her. “ _What_ did I say about you two getting all kissy-kissy on my dime? Do I need to get the squirt bottle?”

Logan, his eyes sparking with anger, makes to step around Veronica, but she dodges in front of him, blocking while Ruby makes fake mouths with her hands and smooshes them together like a child taunting someone with K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

Veronica stuffs her protesting libido back into its box and schools her face into her business-bitch stare. She whips the contract out of her bag and dangles it in Ruby’s direction. “We’ve got what we came for. Are you ready to go?”

Ruby rolls her eyes. “More than” and turns on her heel. As she does, Veronica notices the small pink tote bag slung over one shoulder. It’s bulging around something large and boxy and baby blue. Veronica eyes it suspiciously.

“You shouldn’t take anything, Ruby. We don’t want to alert Mrs. Barnes that we’ve been in here if she’s not tipped off already.”

She swings the bag around to clutch it to her chest protectively. “It’s valuable memorabilia. I’m not going to leave it here for that ancient vulture to sell out from under me.”

“Ruby.” Veronica advances a few steps and Ruby retreats, still clutching the tote. “Put it back. If it’s that valuable it’ll be covered by your insurance.”

“I don’t have insurance! And it’s a one of a kind item. It can’t be replaced.” Ruby cringes away as Veronica reaches for the bag. “Stay back, Veronica! I mean it! This is none of your business!”

Ruby backpedals herself right into a stack of boxes, trips, and goes down hard on her ass. She throws her hands out instinctively to catch her fall and loses her grip on the tote bag. Out flies a large album with a padded blue cover, decorated with rows of ruffled blue lace. It’s got a sailboat and a large white “L” embroidered on the front and, peeking out from between the pages is a photo that almost looks like…

Ruby scrambles forward on her hands and knees, wig slightly askew, reaching for the book, but Veronica plants one booted foot firmly in front of it, protectively. She bends down and extracts the photo.

It’s an almost ridiculously fat baby, maybe six months old, wedged into a too-small baby bathtub with chub rolls escaping out the sides, completely bald, his mouth open in a gleeful shout. She’d seen the framed 8 x 10 version many times—displayed proudly on the Echolls piano until fourteen year old Logan had finally tired of Lilly’s teasing and hidden it away somewhere.

The baby is Logan.

He stares at it, wide-eyed. “That’s my baby book. I don’t—it burned in the fire, though. It was in the house.”

Ruby works her mouth open and closed a few times. “I paid for it! It was legal!”

Veronica stoops down and picks up the book, carefully slotting the photo back inside. Logan puts his hand out to trace along the lace ruffle. “It’s mine. Candy Spelling gave it to my mom.”

“How did you get it?” Veronica advances on Ruby, backing her up a few steps.

“I…online. An online auction. Last year.”

“How is that possible?”

“Anyone could have taken it before the fire.” Logan shakes his head. “We had such a big staff, and after Aaron went to jail…Anyone could have taken it.”

Veronica flips open the book, landing on a page titled “First Words” in ornate, foil-embossed letters. Underneath, someone had written: Dog (“gog”)

“Trina needed a lot of my attention, even then,” Logan quips in a hoarse voice.

Veronica ignores him, running her fingers over the letters and wondering if she’s looking at Lynn Echolls’ neat, loopy script, or that of some nanny or secretary.  She snaps the book closed. “We’ll take this with us. Any other of Logan’s cherished heirlooms you want to disclose?”

Ruby shakes her head, mute for once.

Veronica tucks the book into her now-bulging messenger bag and offers one hand to Logan. “Let’s get out of here.”

He nods, trying to shake off the odd emotion of their discovery, and moves to one of the large windows in the living room, prying it open. “It’ll be easier if we don’t have to climb over the sink.” Leaning out the window, he gauges the distance and the landing. “Me first, and then I’ll catch you, ‘kay?” Without waiting for Veronica’s response, he swings himself over the waist-high sill. She can see his fingers for a second as he hangs and then he releases, landing with a barely audible thump.

A few seconds later a pretty credible owl hoot drifts up to her and she snorts out loud. She swings the strap of her bag over the other shoulder so that it is more secure across her body and is moving to the window when Ruby snags her arm.

“Veronica, tell him…”

Veronica shakes her off and swings her legs over the windowsill. “Nope, Ruby.”

“Look, it was an investment, okay? I was, like, keeping it safe. I mean, it was for sale _on the internet_. Imagine what crazy person could have bought it.”

“Yeah, _imagine_.” Veronica takes a firm hold of the windowsill and slides her body out and down. She can feel Logan’s hands on her ankles, then her calves, and she drops without hesitation, knowing he’ll catch her.

On the ground, she straightens out her bag and her shirt and holds out a hand again. Logan takes it, lacing their fingers together as they walk away from the apartment.

“Hey!” Ruby yells from the open window. “What about me?”

“You’ve got proof that you’re in the apartment legally, now.” Veronica yells back over her shoulder. “You’ll figure a way out.”

Ruby slaps the side of the window sill. “Logan, I’m sorry baby!”

Veronica tugs Logan closer, lifting the hand she is holding to wrap his arm around her shoulders. “I’ll send you the bill Monday, Ruby. Good luck in court.”

Logan kisses the top of her head and they stroll down the driveway and back to where they’d left the car.

Veronica carefully sets the baby book in the backseat of the Beemer. As she straightens up, Logan loops his arms around her waist from behind. “My hero.” She can tell he’s trying for teasing, but it comes out slightly husky.

It feels natural to turn around in his arms and kiss him lightly on the corner of his mouth. Logan freezes for a second, eyes blazing into hers with sudden heat, and then he grabs her and spins her in tight for a fierce, deep kiss.

For a moment she’s a passive responder—shocked at the feeling of his mouth on hers for the first time in so long—and then it clicks into place. _Yes. This. This._ And she grabs at the back of his neck, his head, pulling him in closer, falling into his passionate kiss as he presses her back against the side of the car. _This_ is what she’s been trying to find all day. Trying to remember. God, how could she have forgotten? How could this ever have felt awkward? This.

Logan groans into her mouth, then breaks the kiss to rest his forehead against hers. “Veronica, can we _please_ go home now?”

______________

 

Veronica’s new apartment near Dog Beach is in a shambly old building, constructed before Neptune gentrified and became a vacation destination for drunken co-eds. She’s only lived here for a month and usually when she arrives home she takes a moment to survey her new kingdom with satisfaction. Walking distance from the beach, semi-reasonably priced, three times the size of her more expensive hole in the wall in Brooklyn.

Today, she’s got other things on her mind.

As soon as Logan parks the Beemer next to the silver RAV 4 she bought last month, she’s leaning across the center console and kissing him for all she’s worth. Kissing him like she hasn’t seen him for months, hasn’t been near him for years, will never ever let him go.

Her front door, and the quiet, private apartment behind it, is maybe forty feet away. So close. And yet it feels impossible to do anything other than twist into him, untangling from the seat belt and climbing toward his lap without releasing his lips.

Logan meets her hunger with his own, unleashed fully on her for the first time in what feels like forever, pulling her toward him and sliding both hands down her hips and under her ass to lift her bodily over the gearshift. For the next few minutes, he’s all mouth and hands and noise, releasing this insane fucking little moan into her mouth when he finally gets her at the right angle.

He’s just wiggling one hand into the front of her shorts when she pulls back for a second to breathe. In that brief heartbeat of stillness the universe weighs in again when a dollop of odiferous bird shit splats right onto console beside them.

It doesn’t stop them for a second.

Logan tugs her closer to him and her hands fumble behind to release the car door. They kind of…tumble out, her on top of him, like two drunks holding each other up as they move across toward the building.

Somewhere in the stairway up to the apartment, their mouths connect in a kiss again, and from there on out she’s brailing her way through the bag, her fingers finding a pen, her lock pick case, a pack of gum, a small flashlight, another pen, and finally her apartment keys.

She unlocks without releasing him and they crash through the door. “Nice place,” Logan mutters, not looking up from her mouth. She cackles and grabs a fistful of his shirt, trying in vain to pull it over his head without letting go of him.

He swings her around and the messenger bag that is still hanging heavy from her shoulder thwacks dully into the wall with a metallic jangle of loose change. She works it off of her shoulder and lets it fall where it may. They both bend down and wrestle their footwear off—stupid boots, stupid laces—before she leaps back at him.

Logan catches her with a laugh and she buries her face in the crook of his neck, searching for that spot that makes him—her teeth scrape lightly across the vein at the side of his neck and he lets out a stuttering, animalistic groan.

_Success._

He pulls back for a breath, shucking his t-shirt in one swift move and tossing it in the general direction of her kitchen. She works her own tank off and she’s trying to tug him towards her bedroom, but somehow she ends up climbing him instead, the glorious smooth muscles of his torso bunching between her thighs. He laughs into her mouth and she can taste it, bright and warm, settling into her body.

Suckling the underside of his chin, she licks into her mouth the intimate end-of-the-day tang of his body and the faded notes of his aftershave. This morning he’d been on an aircraft carrier in the ocean, and she’d been alone.

Meanwhile, Logan’s hands are doing double—triple—duty, supporting her under her ass, while also managing to cop a feel that makes her gasp and undulate into him, and working the fly of his own jeans.

“You’re like…” She works her way up to his mouth, kissing him, swiping at the strands of hair that are getting in her way, “…like a sexy octopus.”

He laughs again, hitches her up higher, successfully loosening his fly button.

“A really—“ Kiss. “Fucking—“ Lip bite. “Sexy octopus.”

“Hang—hang on.” He gasps, stumbling backwards, fighting to get his waistband out of the tight prison of her thighs. “Trying to free the ninth leg.”

“Bragger.” She lifts her hips and helps him, pushing his jeans and briefs down together.

He steps out of them and, naked and still carrying her, staggers sideways into the coffee table, knocking a lamp over with a crash she barely registers. “I never tell a lie.”

“That’s the boy scouts, not the Navy.” Reaching behind her, she unclasps her bra. “No wait. That’s Abraham Lincoln.”

Just as he opens his mouth to respond, she lays one hand across it, “if the next thing out of your mouth is a Lincoln log joke, you’re going to be very sorry.”

She unlocks her legs, dropping to the ground and dancing away as he makes a frustrated-confused noise and tries to pull her back. She pushes him back a few steps and he lands in the leather chair in the corner of her living room. She’d inherited the chair when she moved into the apartment, and although its worn brown saddle leather matched nothing else in the apartment, she loved it dearly. Curled up in it, she can look out the window and see the ocean through a convenient gap in the neighboring buildings.

Her view now definitely beats that all to hell, though. Logan sits sprawled out naked on the leather. Well...naked except he’s still wearing his socks—those thick white athletic ones, pulled up his calves, and it should really be a funny image, but looking at him—skin flushed underneath his dark tan, cock straining hard against his stomach, his eyes hot as he watches her—it’s really not. It’s not funny at all.

Veronica unsnaps her shorts and strips them off with her underwear in one motion. Underneath, she’s so wet that the air in the room feels cold as soon as it hits her bare flesh.

Logan stares up at her; she can tell by the look on his face that there was another smart comment on the tip of his tongue, but he seems to have forgotten it.

Climbing onto the chair, she straddles his lap and rises up on her knees, putting them face to face. He runs his fingers up the inside of her thighs, slipping through the wetness that’s collected there. “Shit, look at you. Look at you, Veronica.”

Shuddering, he explores her gently with two fingers while staring into her eyes, watching her reaction. She needs…ah, fuck. She needs…Veronica reaches down and grasps his cock, pulling it away from his body and using the head to tease around her clit while Logan’s free hand grips the arm of the chair, his fingers digging in hard enough to blanch and dent the leather. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, oh god please, Veronica, please.”

Dragging him down into place, she lets go and they lock eyes again. Logan swallows. “Now?”

“Now.”

He rocks upward, sinks in one wet, glorious inch and then pulls out with a muttered curse word. He rests his forehead against the crook of her neck, breathing out of control. “Do we need—?”

“No.” Veronica shakes her head furiously. “No we’re—I’m on the pill. We’re good.”

“Fuck!” He surges up again and pulls her onto him slowly, grabbing her hips to adjust the angle when he can’t go deep enough, and then his mouth gapes open and he’s there. Oh god. _There_. Rubbing his cock just right against that spot that only seems to exist for him.

He’s so deep in her in this position, bottomed out, her ass against his thighs, when he moves he’s grinding against her everywhere—sex, clit, thighs, belly, breasts—touching everywhere, everything.

 _Yes._ Veronica is moaning something, babbling out loud, and she can hear her voice, but not the words she’s saying, and it doesn’t matter even a little because he keeps hitting that spot, rocking into her like he was always there. Will always be there.  Never—it’s never— _god_.

She’s scratching at his ugly short hair, nails scrabbling, no grip to be found, opening her mouth to kiss sloppily at the side of his face, the tall expanse of his forehead.

Logan is—oh, shit—he’s _looking down_ between their bodies. _Watching_ them.

She presses her forehead against him, following his gaze down, taking in his abs, sheened with sweat, clenching and flexing as he thrusts back and forth.

There’s her own stomach, creamy pale against his extreme tan, muscles trembling, and deeper, erotic flashes of his cock, moving into her, coming back out slick and wet, then in. Hidden and revealed with each shift of their bodies.

She slides one hand down her belly, trailing lower, between them, watching, and feeling Logan watch while she touches herself—her fingers slipping over slick flesh—touches him while he moves in and out. Circling her taut skin where he enters, shuddering from the sensation, then the base of his shaft, both of them hot and sticky beneath her fingers, under their gaze.

She’s watching it, and _he’s_ watching it, and she’s feeling it and oh fuck, oh fuck. She’s been touching herself, alone, for so many months, imagining this—or a ghost of this, a fantasy so different, so much less than the raw reality of his stretch and his breath and that sound he makes that’s like a groan and a squeak combined, and his hot gaze on her where they’re joined.

All of a sudden it’s all just so glorious—so _much_ , so amazing—that she throws her head back with a laugh, arching away from Logan so that he brings his thighs up to support her ass. She’s pushing hard into him as he quickens the rhythm of his hips and she spreads her arms out straight, fingers flared, like she’s flying, Jack, she’s flying, bouncing hard on his lap.

Every inch of her skin is stretched, open and alive. She brings her arms up over her head in victory, joy, glorying in the glazed look on Logan’s face as he stares at her jiggling breasts.

Usually, with them, someone is talking during sex. She is, or he is, or they both are, but right now the only sound in the room is their breath and gasps, and the ugly-hot squelch and suck of their bodies, against each other, against the chair.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, the reality of him underneath her—this moment fills her up almost to bursting. She wants to prolong it forever, but her body wants what she’s working toward more. Logan’s face, right in front of her, is tensing and trembling with every torque of his hips. He’s close, about ready to go off, and _God_ the look in his eyes. God.

She tries to lift a hand to his cheek, but it’s stuck clutching his shoulder and she can’t seem to summon the muscle control.

If she can just—a little more—FUCK! There.

T

 H

   E

     R

       E

She arcs forward into it, every muscle along her spine bunched, thighs trembling, tension coiled unbearably tight for an exquisite moment.

And then release.

Blood pulses, hot, behind her eyes as her body goes suddenly, blissfully limp.

When her brain clears, she’s still crouched on top of Logan, her body slumped into his while he trembles. His dick is still warm inside of her and they’re open-mouthed kissing. Kissing deep and exploratory—greeting and memory and apology and reunion. He tastes like salt, or she does, maybe, there’s really no way to tell at this point.

He wraps strong arms around her between kisses. “God, Veronica.”

“Yeah?” She smirks into his mouth and he scoops her up in his arms. When he stands, his skin separates from the leather with a ripping pulled-sticker kind of sound and she laughs. “Feel my pain.”

He jostles her, teasingly, in remonstrance, dodging around the wreckage they made of the living room and carrying her back towards her bedroom.  “Owww, my abs.”

Veronica huffs, mock-offended. “Hey, no one asked you to carry me.”

“No, it’s just…how am I this sore? I was on the bottom.” He bounces her again, his grip sure and easy despite his complaints as they cross the threshold into her bedroom. “I’m taking, like, ninety percent of the credit for that display of amore.”

“Psh. You wish.” She yawns. “That was all me, buddy.”

“Seventy-thirty.”

He tosses her gently onto her bed, finally strips his socks off, and crawls in after her. She should probably get up and clean herself up, wash off, get a glass of water, but right now it’s feeling like a better idea to press her sticky parts against his sticky parts and just stay here for a while. In her bedroom. With her boyfriend.

Logan’s arms tighten around her. “You still have my shirt.”

She follows his gaze across the room to where a Navy! shirt—one of his large supply—is draped over the back of her chair. “Yeah, my ebay store hasn’t been doing so hot lately. The market for memorabilia is down.”

A moment too late, she remembers the baby album. _Oops._  In silent apology, she reaches up to scratch her nails lightly through the spiky buzzed hair at the back of his neck and he gives her a lazy, half-lidded smile. She slides her hand around to cup the back of his ear. “Hey, what _is_ ordnance, anyway?”

“Hm?” He picks up her other hand from where it rests loosely against his chest and toys with it.

“Ordnance. You said it was a good deployment because you didn’t, um,…”

“Expend much. Yeah.  Ordnance is basically any weapons on the jet…” He ticks off his list on her fingers. “AIMs, AGMs—GBUs usually, and the guns.”

She heaves a sigh. “That’s some scary shit, you know, Lieutenant.”

“I know.” He lifts her limp wrist to his mouth, drops a kiss on her pulse point.

“But you’re on shore duty now, so no more sorties?”

“Very good.” He pats her hip condescendingly at the correct terminology and she drives an elbow into him. The brief tussle that follows flips them around on the bed a few times and ends with her back against the headboard and her hand on his dick, pumping slowly and enjoying his groans and shudders while she teases him back to hardness. She’s drinking in the expressions that drift across his face, the skin shifting over the too-gaunt hollows of his cheeks as his mouth gapes open with each down-stroke.

The food on the carrier must be for shit, but at least there’ll be a good long stretch before he has to go away again. Time to fatten him up—she lets her fingers drift down to tease his balls—time to enjoy each other.

Logan props himself up on his elbows and slides a hand down her side. While rolling his hips into the pressure of her hand, he finger walks his way down to her sex and run his thumb in a gentle circle around her clit, looking at her questioningly. Veronica nods and rolls over onto her back, spreading her legs so that he can settle into the cradle of her hips. Then he's inside her again and they rock together for a long time, as gentle and close as they can get.

When it’s over, she’s lost all sense of what time it is, or how long they’ve been lying there together.

“George Washington,” he yawns into the sweaty skin on her neck.

“Hm?”

“It’s George Washington who never told a lie.”

She’s kind of fuzzing in and out pleasantly and it takes her a moment to pick up that thread. “Yeah, that Lincoln was a shifty fucker, you’re right.”

“Never trust a man in a stovepipe hat.”

“Speaking of,” he traces a little pattern on the sensitive underside of her breast. “Tell me what you’ve been up to. Tell me about this Morrison case. What’s going on with Weevil?”

“Well, he hasn’t taken to wearing a top hat, that I know of.”

“Har har. How’s the hunt for stolen evidence going?”

“That’s really Dad’s case...”

“Okay,” he says, quietly.

She sighs and digs her shoulders into the pillows, trying to hold onto the glow of really fantastic sex. “I think we need a rule. No cases in the bedroom.” Logan’s brow creases a little in that way that signifies hurt feelings, so she pats him tiredly on whatever sweaty part of his chest in is reach. “I don’t want to _think_ about work in here. I just want to think about your glorious dick.”

His face cracks in a smile. “Oh, well, far be it from me to impede your fantasies.”

“Fantasies? I only settle for the real thing, baby.”

He wraps his arms around her and rolls them so she’s laying on top of him, reaches one hand up and brushes some of her hair away from her face. “Veronica, I am, _without a doubt_ , the real thing.”

“I thought you were the Right Stuff.”

“Okay, that’s NASA again, and I’m starting to think you didn’t take the syllabus I left you very seriously.”

“All I do is work, and give, work and give.”

Faking a wince, he rubs his side. “Sixty-forty.”

“Hey!” She jabs him in the ribs with an index finger. “You want to stay, or not, buddy?”

He props his head up on one hand, uses the other to cup her face and caress her cheek with the edge of his thumb. “Yeah, I do. I really do.”

So he stays, and, in the morning, he stays some more. Over the next few months, without them ever really talking about it, he spends most of his nights at Veronica’s apartment—his toothbrush, and work out clothes, and the lint roller he uses on his uniforms migrating piece by piece from Dick Casablancas’s spare bedroom to the nooks and crannies of her life.

By the time his shore duty job as a test pilot at the San Diego base starts up, he’s living with her by any measure of the word, waiting in bed for her when she has a late stake out and paying all of the utility bills.

And she lets herself settle into it, lets herself believe in everything they’re building, because she loves him, and it’s comfortable, and life is pretty good. Now that he’s here.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I have been attempting to finish and post this since the original smut-a-thon in February, and here it finally is; DONE, AT LAST!
> 
> A lot of really smart people helped me out with this fic as I wrestled with it. Much, much thanks to the entire crew for bouncing around ideas, and specifically to **marshmallowtasha** for, among other things, reminding me that when people put boots on they need to take them off at some point in order to be naked, **ghostcat** for insightful conversations about Veronica as a character that I am probably not smart enough for, and **cheshirecatstrut,** for her expert level humor analysis and SUPER kind cheerleading of this fic. Thanks guys!


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